Tag: christianity

0 A La Carte Christianity: Family Planning

February 17, 2020
by Connie Morgan
· Philosophy/Religion · Thought Box

This piece is the first in a series of essays on how Christians now more than ever, avoid Biblical truth. These topics are examples of how Christians degrade their own spirituality while simultaneously harming the reputation of Christianity as a whole. Interest in religion is in steep decline amongst Millennials and Generation Z. It should be no surprise the decline is accompanied by a trend of a la carte Christianity where Christians/Churches pick and choose what they like about the Bible and what they will ignore. These appear to be attempts by the Church to mirror popular culture in lieu of attempting to drive the culture.

Ask a Christian if they want to glorify God and they’ll say yes. Ask a Christian if they trust in God’s plan and they’ll say yes. Ask a Christian if they want to or have given their life to Christ and they’ll say yes…but over and over again I run into a subject where modern day Christians are not willing to “give their lives to Christ” and that is with family planning.

The Bible is very clear when it comes to children. Other than Jesus himself, children may be the greatest gift the Lord bestowed upon us. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.” – Psalm 127:3 – 5. God expects us to have and want children. His first command about having children is found in Genesis. John, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs all explain that children will bring you joy. Philippians teaches that having children will make you a better person. Children are referred to as gifts and blessings in the Bible. “Be fruitful and multiply” means at a minimum having three children.

I don’t see how any honest person can read the Bible and not conclude children in abundance is something pleasing to the Lord.

This appears to be an uncomfortable truth with the majority of young Christians. It is rare to hear a Christian say they will have “as many children as the Lord blesses me with.” Instead Christians want to have as many children as they are comfortable with. Christians want children based on their timing not God’s. Many Christians are not interested in God’s plan when it comes to family planning. “I want to hit xyz career milestone first,” “We’re waiting until we have xyz amount of money,” “We’re going to stop at 2” are potential rejections of God’s plan for you.

Christians will use their careers or current financial situation as a reason to hold off on children. This concern doesn’t hold a lot of merit as research shows being married and any kind of employment is all it takes to make sure your family’s needs are met. Even “needs” have been drastically redefined by society at large. Families don’t want more children if it means no more trips to Hawaii, buying secondhand and/or much less personal freedom. Raising children requires sacrifice no doubt, but God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. If His plan for us is five children, as Christians we should praise his generosity, not actively avoid it. Christians conveniently seem to lose faith in God’s ability to provide if it involves children.

Contraception is a means by which Christians reject God’s will. I have heard some argue that as long as one is “open” to the idea of children at any time, birth control is ok. The argument here is that God can do all things and if he wants you to have children he’ll make it happen whether you’re using protection or not. While it’s true God can make anything happen, this premise is intellectually dishonest. God also gives us free will. He let’s us decide the course of our lives instead of forcing us to love and obey Him.

Let’s say you have a friend who wants to be married. For years this person hasn’t found their match. At the same time this friend doesn’t try to meet people and is a homebody. You probably wouldn’t blame this person’s loneliness on God’s unwillingness to provide, you’d rightfully tell this friend they need to get out of the house more if they want to find someone! While yes, God could make the pizza delivery guy their soulmate (helluva meet-cute) human effort is frequently part of putting God’s plan into action. The same goes with contraception, you cannot make the claim that you are open to the idea of children while literally and figuratively taking efforts to prevent said children.

Now there is one form of birth control I do believe gets the theological ok and that is natural family planning or NFP. I have to give Catholics credit here because I believe they get this one right. No, natural family planning is not “the rhythm method,” it is much more scientific and exact. Women measure their temperature, pay attention to their vaginal discharge and track their period in order to pinpoint when they’re ovulating and avoid intercourse during that time. This method is up to 99% effective when done correctly, the same as other popular forms of birth control.

The difference is, NFP leaves the invitation open for God’s intervention, both symbolically and literally. Not only that, but NFP requires effort and constant communication with your partner. Popping pills, condoms or an insertion method are easy, mindless and habitual. A couple will only go through with NFP if they have legitimate, serious concerns about having children.

NFP forces the couple to ask themselves every month if avoiding children is really worth the effort. Couples must constantly check-in on their marriage. A simple question like “Why shouldn’t we have a child right now?” opens the floodgates to all kinds of follow-ups that could reveal problems one half of the couple didn’t realize. “I don’t feel financially secure,” “I’m still struggling from the last pregnancy,” “I don’t feel close to you right now,” “I want to move” etc are all important discussions that a couple engaging in NFP must address head-on every month. Commitment, communication, consideration, and self-control are all key to NFP. This is why NFP has a bonus side effect. The reported divorce rate of couples that use NFP range as low as 0% but even the most conservative estimates place divorce amongst NFP couples as 9.6% compared to 14.4% amongst those who never used NFP.

Now someone always brings this up in the comments, none of this is to say that married couples who are unable to conceive somehow have a less Holy union. Children are not the only way the Lord blesses us and the number of children a couple has is not indicative of their faithfulness to God. Likewise, if a woman has a condition that makes pregnancy life threatening then contraception may become an appropriate choice. In both of these cases, adoption is still an option I would encourage Christians in these positions to explore – this may be God’s calling to you. I also admit it is likely that children simply aren’t part of God’s plan for every married couple.

Worth noting is even secular women are becoming more and more interested in NFP for the health and relationship benefits. It’s funny how often scripture based lifestyle advice often turns out to be good for humans, religious or not. Dr Jolene Brighten has been a champion for NFP or the fertility awareness method as she calls it. Her book “Beyond the Pill” is a best seller.

Regardless of any earthly benefit, the question for Christians should always be – are my actions glorifying God? This means an openness to following God’s plan and celebrating the gifts He gives you whether it was the plan you were hoping for or not. Christians are unBiblical when they try to restrict or perfectly time the number of blessings (children) God gives them. Planning children according to their will instead of God’s. Wishing for a life according to God’s will while using birth control is like saying “God let me live according to your plan…unless your plan is for me to have children right now, then I am not interested.”

5 The Logic of Faith

September 6, 2017
by Connie Morgan
· Philosophy/Religion · Thought Box

I’ve wanted to sort out my views on religion for a long time. Whether I was an atheist or believer, I wanted to know exactly why I was either of those things. “I find it hard to believe…” is not a good enough reason not to believe in something so important. If God is real there is actually nothing more important than dedicating your life to serving Him. If God isn’t real then if I care about my Christian friends I should try to convince them they are wasting their lives worshipping an idea that isn’t true.

I wasn’t raised in any sort of religious community but my parents were. They both call themselves agnostic but made an effort to expose my brother and me to religion. I think they did this because they wanted us to make our own decisions about religion and also because they believed it was important for us to have at least a basic understanding of Christianity because we live in a Christian nation. We’d sometimes attend Christian church services of varying denominations. If a friend of the family invited us to church we nearly always went and my parents took no issue with us attending the various Youth Groups we’d get invited to.

I liked attending different church services but always felt like an outsider just passing through for a moment. Church services were fun to observe but felt rather silly to me. None of the churches I attended made me feel any certain way; and I have attended a lot of church services, pretty much every Christian denomination you can think of. I saw the value of religious communities at a very young age and still don’t understand the hatred some have towards Judeo/Christian thought. Of course certain churches or certain Christians have twisted religion in wrong and sometimes downright evil ways but the values generally promoted by Jews and Christians are something I could get on board with.

But to believe there is a magical dude in the sky who created us all? So if evolution is a thing how does that work? Did God allow for evolution? Was Genesis literal or were those metaphorical days? And so then God must’ve created the planets. How does that work? And if we’re all perfect creations why are some of us not? Down syndrome, autism, red hair…why do these things exist then? Although I would sometimes climb a mountain and be so struck by the beauty at the top that I would think “how could this have happened by accident?” or find myself feeling more at ease when someone said they would “pray for me” or I would sometimes cry when listening to a gospel or Christmas song, feelings would never be enough for me when deciding whether or not to find faith. God needed to be scientifically and historically accurate.

It was mainly my inability to reconcile science and faith that held me back. In hindsight, it was pretty arrogant of me to believe no other Christians asked themselves those questions and/or that there weren’t any thoughtful answers to them. Another part of my arrogance was I felt my life needed to be perfect in order for me to find faith. Not because God wanted me to be perfect but because I needed to have a completely clear head in order to make a decision so big. I couldn’t turn to God when I was sad after a breakup, dealing with a death or some other emotional event. Emotions cloud judgment; people who hit rock bottom only to find God may have stumbled on the truth but only out of their own weakness, I would never use God as a crutch. Last Summer I finally felt my life was exactly how I wanted it to be, my conscious felt clear and seriously diving into my investigation was safe mentally and emotionally.

My search for truth last year was largely influenced by a question that I couldn’t answer, rather I couldn’t answer it without there being an objective good. That question being “Why would it be wrong to euthanize severely handicapped people.” Severely handicapped referring to folks who can’t communicate or take care of themselves.

The thought of wiping all of these people off the face of the earth was horrifying to me. I think most people would agree doing this would be wrong. If today, President Trump announced: “we’re rounding up all the severely handicapped and euthanizing them for the good of the country,” we’d all be outraged and rightly so. But why would we be outraged?

Because killing is wrong! You’d say. But why is killing wrong? Why would killing handicapped people be wrong? To make a long philosophical debate short, logically, it’s not wrong to kill. If someone is severely handicapped they’re a burden on society in every way. Monetarily, emotionally, they truly are a resource suck. If we could eliminate them in a painless and efficient manner why shouldn’t we? And this is where an objective good comes in. It’s not ok, to kill humans, no matter their status, health or otherwise because God said so, and God is the objective good.

Honest atheists know there is no objective good without a God. As former “obnoxious atheist” turned Christian, geneticist Francis Collins said, “no law of science could adequately explain the existence of morality.” Jerry Coyne, a staunch atheist writer and biologist admits that morality does not exist for atheists. And unsurprisingly he is an advocate for the euthanasia of babies born with disabilities, calling it “merciful.”

There are atheists who argue that morality is possible without a God, but their arguments are not convincing nor scientifically absolute at all.

As atheist turned most profound Christian thinker of the modern era C.S. Lewis said, “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”

That blew my mind a little bit.

Without objective good there is no morality and without morality all you have is relativism, and with relativism we are all reduced to objects. It’s easy for people who haven’t really thought about the things they believe and why they believe them to just say “oh I’m a relativist” as most/many atheists do. But relativism doesn’t make sense if you have any sort of moral boundaries at all, and pretty much all humans do.

Relativism is the doctrine that knowledge, truth, and morality exist in relation to culture, society, or historical context, and are not absolute. And it’s all we have without an objective standard for good. Under Relativist doctrine, culture excuses any behavior. Let’s take slavery for example. In almost every early culture, including African culture, slavery was perfectly normal. For hundreds of years no one thought anything of it. Relatively it was moral to have slaves. Did that make slavery right? I’d argue no. But according to relativism slavery then was acceptable. Another example is if Nazis had taken over during WWII and convinced the whole world to get behind them. Let’s say Nazis ruled for 100 years. The masses were convinced that exterminating Jews was a must. Would that make it any less evil? I’d argue no. But a relativist would have to accept that behavior because the culture dictated it was a-ok.

I struggled with the killing question. I sought answers for literally months, turning to religious and atheist people alike though I found the conclusion pretty early on, and both camps for the most part agree. Killing for any reason other than protection is only wrong if there is an objective good, and there is only an objective good if God is real.

This is where I was starting to become convinced God must be real. Jesus was still a myth to me but God might be the real deal. My freshman year I researched Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and was convinced those religions might have some good ideas but their “truths” weren’t actually true. If there is a God, I concluded he is the one Christians or Jews describe.

Ok, so if I believe in objective morals (and I do) then God must be real. But ok, what about all the science stuff? Science and religion aren’t compatible and that’s just known by everyone. Then I had science thrown in my face…by Christians and Jews!

Alex Metaxas makes the case for science and God in “Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God” one of the most shared articles in Wall Street Journal history.

Metaxas makes this point:

Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met, or the whole thing falls apart. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby, whose gravity will draw away asteroids, a thousand times as many would hit Earth’s surface. The odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.

According to the odds, I shouldn’t exist. Hmm, that was interesting, and as I dug deeper into this idea, I found more science to back up the theory of intelligent design.

As former atheist activist turned believer Antony Flew stated, “the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source.”

Of course, you can always find refuting arguments but I could find no science whatsoever that debunked or even came close to debunking God. And I found no evidence that religion and science could not coexist. Einstein himself said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

And no, evolution and faith aren’t incompatible.

An objective good is only possible through God and science is compatible with faith. For goodness sake the inventor of the Big Bang Theory was a monsignor in the Catholic church. Whoah! This realization sort of shook me to say the least. Mostly because I had waited so long to ask and answer the obvious questions. I was starting to admit to myself that belief in God might actually be logical. I was explaining to my agnostic mom that I was finding shocking evidence that God is a rational idea.

“Mom! I am not using feelings at all and I am still becoming more convinced there is a God.”

“Feeling is part of religion Connie. You can’t commit unless you feel the spirit.”

I knew she was right. But fortunately I had started praying, the ultimate anecdotal experiment. This would surely affect my feelings.

It was suggested to me that I start praying, literally start acting like I was Christian just to see what would happen so I did. I started attending a Christian non-denominational church when I could and for months I prayed. It felt very weird and ridiculous. I prayed out loud because I heard that was more “sincere” and boy did I not like it at first. I tried to take prayer seriously though and prayed the ways recommended in the Bible. I praised God a lot but I asked for help with things and to my utter shock and amazement my prayers were answered.

One example that sticks out was during a long run while training for a 50K. It was a 22 mile run and I didn’t pack water like the idiot I am. I was so tired, my head pounding from the sun and dehydration that nearing the end of my run with about a mile left, I said to God “please, help me get water,” and I shit you not, I crested the hill I was on and there was a lemonade stand. I had ran this route many times and never before had there been a lemonade stand. The little girls at the stand not only quenched my thirst, but through conversation with the girls’ mom I learned they needed a swim teacher…and I am a swim teacher. The Lord had given me water in two ways. But that was just a coincidence and I still wasn’t convinced.

Then I prayed that a friend get in touch with me or else I feared we would lose contact and the next day that friend, who I hadn’t heard from in months messaged me. Then I prayed for answers to a personal problem I had been dealing with for years, the next day an article came across my Twitter feed addressing the exact unique issue I was facing, and it was written by a Christian. I still wasn’t convinced though. Obviously these things were coincidences.

Then much more recently, I visited my grandfather and was officially convinced of God. My grandpa has cancer riddled throughout his entire body and has been undergoing chemotherapy for some time now. One of, if not my first prayer, I asked the Lord do what he must with my grandfather’s life, but please make it as painless as possible. When I visited my grandfather, months after that first prayer he told me “surprisingly, the chemo hasn’t been painful at all.” My mouth metaphorically dropped as I remembered my first prayer.

An objective good, cohesion with science and my own anecdotal examples. I couldn’t ignore the idea of God any longer, for that would be ignoring the truth. And there’s only one reason to become a Christian, not because it makes you feel good, or because it’s what you’ve always been taught, but because God is the Truth.

After hours and hours of intense research over the last year spent looking at arguments from a long list of Judeo/Christian thinkers and atheists alike I was convinced that God is the Truth and soon after that Jesus was indeed the Son of God sent to save us from our sin. (Reconciling Jesus was a whole nother internal crisis but this blog has already gotten too long.)

The evidence was eventually so overwhelming that I decided to accept Jesus into my heart and was baptized by the pastor of the church I had regularly been attending surrounded by friends and strangers alike. It was a weird feeling and honestly I am still not 100% comfortable in my new life of faith. My insecurities have shown in that I worry people I want to respect my opinion now won’t. (Which is dumb because 100% of my political views can be argued from a secular perspective.) But I follow the truth where it leads and the truth has lead me to Jesus.

If you’re an atheist, agnostic or even religious person I encourage you to really ask yourself why you believe the things you believe. If you believe it is wrong to kill, why do you believe this? If you believe it is wrong to take advantage of people weaker than you why do you believe this? If you believe cheating on your wife or husband is wrong, why? But not just the serious stuff, why do you hold the smaller principles in your life to be true? I think most of us, young and old, religious and not haven’t done this. Ask questions and be honest about the answers you find. Atheists think they are more rational than Christians but atheism requires faith too. Could there really be anything more important in life than figuring out whether faith in God or faith in an accident is correct?

If you’re searching for answers these are some of the Christian and atheist thinkers I found to be helpful: Francis Collins, Jerry Coyne, Antony Flew, Sam Harris, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alex Metaxas, Yaron Brook, C.S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft, Ayn Rand, Richard Dawkins, Lee Strobel, Andrew Klavan, AJ Jacobs, Timothy Keller, Michael Shermer, Jordan Peterson, Bishop Barron, Ravi Zacharias and my former roommate, William Bergman.

Seek out the truth, whether you come to the same conclusion as me or not, there’s really nothing more important.

0 God Bless The Mormons

March 8, 2017
by Connie Morgan
· In the News

After the November election things were tense in the United States to say the least. That being said, I saw things that contradicted the narrative given by the media almost daily. My favorite example was one day when I was walking my dog and passed a man who was from the Middle East struggling to start his car. The car had been sitting for quite some time and was covered with at least a foot and a half of snow. He eventually got it started and drove it a very short distance across the street where the car got stuck on the icy slope leading to a parking lot. It was a fairly busy street as far as foot traffic goes and I continued walking past as did others. When I came back there were now two men helping the dude push his car up the slope. They were blonde haired blue eyed Mormons, name tags and all. As I rounded the corner there were two more on bikes making their way to the scene. “They called for backup,” I thought to myself smiling. It was a tiny moment but it made my eyes a little watery.

There’s a weird double standard regarding religion in America that continues to puzzle me. Certain religions are praised while others are close to demonized (no pun intended). Some are mocked regularly in Family Guy skits while it’s a hate crime to make fun of others.

In America there are “cool” religions and uncool religions, at least as exemplified by the media, and I mean all media, not just the news. You meet some folks at a coffee shop in Seattle and tell them you’re Buddhist and you’ll get respect, tell them you’re Mormon and the reaction probably won’t be the same.

Now all religions have some wackiness to them and the Mormon faith is no different. This religion is particularly fascinating to me, not just in their inner workings but in the way society treats them.

I think the best comparison I can make is to Islam. Around the world Muslims far outnumber Mormons but in the U.S. they are closer to comparable. There are roughly 3.9 million Mormons in the U.S. and roughly 3.3 million Muslims, so as far as population goes they are similar in the U.S.

They are also similar in the way they both spark controversy. Ask random people on the street what they think about Islam or Mormonism and you are likely to get an emotional response. Ask folks about either religion and you will encounter positive and negative reactions and a lot of false stereotypes as well. Both faiths are generally against gay marriage but very pro-traditional marriage, meaning both religions lead to large families and more traditional gender roles. They both have a male founder who claimed to have revelations and created new religious text. Both religions usually promote socially conservative beliefs. Yet on the social issue of religious tolerance the two couldn’t be treated much different.

The greatest example of this is the very popular Broadway musical called “The Book of Mormon.” This is not a show that celebrates the missionary work Mormons do or their commitment to helping thy neighbor or their general polite and respectful culture. No. It’s a play that mocks the whole faith. And to be honest it’s not difficult to mock Mormons. But let’s try wearing the shoe on the other foot…what if there was a play called “The Quran” that mocked Islam and the beliefs that accompany that faith? Can you imagine the reaction? Well, actually we don’t really have to imagine the outcome as it’s already been tested.

In 2005, a Danish newspaper ran a cartoon featuring the Prophet Muhammad. Eventually, protests broke out all over the world, the artist received thousands upon thousands of death threats, a fatwa, and worldwide leaders took action denouncing, investigating and holding meetings over the series.

Now as far as I know, after The Book of Mormon premiered not a single major protest took place, there weren’t death threats, the playwrights did not need to go into hiding or hire security and the only question being asked around the globe in regards to the show was “when are you going to go see it?”

What’s funny is refusing to make fun of all religions equally is in itself a form of discrimination. When you refuse to touch Islam for fear of what may happen afterwards, the assumption you are making is Muslims are wild humans with no sense of humor. Gays, Blacks, Christians, Jews, atheists, crossfitters, we all get mocked and it’s sort of a badge of honor when it happens. Kind of like when Weird Al covers your song. SNL refusing to do a skit poking fun at Islam is sending the message Muslims can’t take a good-natured joke. It’s an odd parable few like to point out.

And Mormons have seen their fair share of persecution and massacres. Do you know why Mormons populated Utah so abundantly? It’s because they were being persecuted and driven out of New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, usually violently. The founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith and his brother were killed in an angry mob while jailed in Carthage, Illinois. Haun’s Mill Massacre resulted in the death 17 Mormons and their are many other cases of Mormons being injured and sometimes killed in mob like fashion. Even today, Mormon missionaries are attacked for their beliefs, but these instances get little news coverage, if any. Utah was a place no one else wanted, so Mormons were essentially forced to flee there.

I reached out to a couple of folks I know who are Mormon and even today they face discrimination, harassment and general hate despite being law abiding citizens who just happen to be Mormon. One friend had someone yell loudly “YOU’RE A MORMON NOOOOO” when they found out her faith. Another spoke of how sports were more difficult because even though his faith had nothing to with it, his teammates constantly brought it up. Another friend relayed certain people don’t want to be your friend when they learn of your faith. These are similar stories I hear Muslims telling.

People in the LDS church express the same frustrations that Muslims do when it comes to the actions of a few changing the public perspective of the faith as a whole. Muslims get frustrated when a terrorist hijacked their faith to commit acts of terror. Mormons get frustrated when a handful of people who claim and tarnish the LDS name (specifically Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) participate in underage polygamy despite the Mormon faith officially denouncing everything related to such behavior over 100 years ago.

I’ve always viewed the Mormon faith as a little preposterous but well intentioned and worthy of respect (just like pretty much any other faith out there) but my appreciation grew tenfold for the Mormons after the last election. Conservatives were called out for supporting a candidate who was barely that. Those who claim to have Judeo/Christian values but supported Trump were called hypocrites and rightly so. But if you want to play identity politics (which I hate doing) there was one group that held true to their principles, one group you couldn’t call hypocrites… you guessed it, the Mormons.

If conservatives were looking for options outside of Trump, they essentially had two, Gary Johnson and Evan McMullin (who was only on 11 state ballots). Funny enough, the two states with the greatest percentage of voters voting for either of these candidates are also the two states with the highest percentage of Mormons. 60% of Utah’s population is Mormon and 24% of the votes went for former Republican third party candidates. Mormons make up 19% of the population in Idaho and 11% of the votes went for McMullin or Johnson. Despite being told by the masses that they aren’t “real Christians,” the LDS church appears to be one of the only groups that voted according to Christian values.

As one Mormon said about Trump, “That’s not the kind of person that I want representing our country. I would hope that our leader would be honest, civil, kind, open.”

It seems many in his church agree.

I want to thank the Mormons. Thank you for being intellectually honest about Trump. Thank you for putting up with mainstream mockery by holding your head high instead of rioting. And thank you for that one time you helped me pull weeds in my yard, appreciate it.